This is in regard to Lemmy.world blocking piracy communities from other instances. This post is not about whether you agree with the decision. It’s about how the admins informed their users.
A week ago Lemmy.world announced their Discord server. This wasn’t very well received (about 25% downvotes, which is rather bad compared to other announcements). The comments on that post were turned off, presumably to avoid backlash.
Before that, announcements about the instance used to be posted to !lemmyworld@lemmy.world. This time, the information was posted on the Discord server instead.
I don’t agree with this. Having to use a proprietary platform to participate in an open-source one goes against the very purpose for me, especially when the new solution isn’t really an improvement (as before the information about the platform was closer to it).
Edit: Corrected the announcements community name.
Update: Lemmy.world finally released an announcement and promised they would inform about similar actions and gather feedback in advance in future.
I believe it’s not images in particular but the overall cached content from the community on .world servers. Since lemmy works by caching content so you browse that content on your home instance instead of the actual source instance where the community resides, your instance may be liable for “hosting” that content. So anything posted there like direct torrent links or whatever will also be on .world servers. Of course the piracy communities have rules that forbid direct sharing of files and links, so maybe they’re just being overly cautious in case mods/admins aren’t quick with enforcing community rules.
I’m not defending them, just attempting to explain their (probable) rationale.